Originally Posted by
Pontius Navigator
I was sent the following link by another ppruner who was not sure if it was useful. It shows the military radar plot of the LKP. It is hard to interpret a dynamic plot from a single screen shot.
Interestingly, as far as I can see, this is a raw radar plot and I cannot make out any track label on MH370 although the radar has an electronic map overlay.
What I think they have shown with the arrow is MH370 LKP. If they think it is returning from the east what did they think seeing it so far west?
Also this position is west, towards the satellite ground position which suggests that the aircraft had to have an easterly track component to reach the northern arc and a southerly one to reach the southern arc (assuming that Indonesian radar is correct with no track). Either way, pings preceding the last ping should show first movement west followed by movement east.
As usual it is in Mandarin.
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This is curious. One of the notable features here is that the track does not match the original description in the media. You can't really make out the letters, but there's good agreement between lines in the picture and waypoints. The one near the top is GIVAL. The track never goes near it. The one under the left side of the white circle is VAMPI. The track goes from VAMPI along route N571 to MEKAR and NILAM. (You can sorta make out the label for MEKAR, look for white pixels near the left edge of the pic, under the track.)
Though the comment says "200nm from Butterworth AB", this is clearly wrong. MEKAR is ~235nm from either Penang or Butterworth and last known is past MEKAR. I'd estimate that it's about 250nm from Penang.
This also seriously undermines the "hiding under SIA68" theory, since, if this is the correct track, it was nowhere near SIA68 when it was lost. (According to FR24, the closest aircraft was UAE343, Kuala Lumpur to Dubai, same route but about 5 minutes behind.)
P.S. By the way, if you assume that it's stuck in heading mode at this point (which would be heading 285 give or take a few degrees) and you extrapolate the course for 6 hours, you get Yemen. Which is nowhere near Inmarsat arcs. So there had to be at least one additional change of heading. N571 is pretty much a straight line from MEKAR all the way to Dubai, but there's a small turn at MEKAR and it's impossible to tell if it was executed by MH370. Dubai (heading 300) is far from the arcs as well. If we assume Indian ocean, the only way to get to the area where Australians are searching (above 40 degrees of latitude) is to to take a 90 degree left turn within 1/2 hour after going off Penang radar.